Penry Williams

Historian and teacher whose classic study of the Tudor age transformed our understanding of the period

Wednesday June 12 2013, 1.01am, The Times

Quizzical, encouraging and a fine lecturer: a portrait of Williams by Jane Lodge

Wednesday June 12 2013, 1.01am, The Times

Penry Williams was the author of a classic of historical writing, The Tudor Regime (1979). His great insight was that “the strength of Tudor government lay in a skilful combination of the formal and the informal, the official and the personal”. When Williams wrote those words, the dominant voice in Tudor studies was that of Sir Geoffrey Elton, who had emphasised the institutions of central administration above all and who saw Henry VIII’s leading minister, Thomas Cromwell, as the promoter of the Tudor revolution in Government. Williams had already, with Gerald Harriss, written a lively polemic against Elton in Past & Present.

When asked whether The Tudor Regime was intended as a refutation of Elton, Williams, a little pained, responded that he hoped it